I hope all EAA members will respond to EAA founder Paul Poberezny's request for feedback to his article about embracing E10 in the EAA Experimenter eMagazine:

http://www.eaa.org/experimenter/article ... s_pick.asp

You can give him your views by email to [email protected] or [email protected] (Homebuilders Community Manager)

Please cc me at [email protected]

I wrote him a couple of weeks ago when the article came out and he responded today, 6 May 2009, saying that only two people had responded. If you are interested in getting EAA to get active in the ethanol issue, here is your chance. You have the founders ear and he is interested in what you have to say.

This is what I told him:

Paul -

You asked for comments about your article Lets Meet the Challenge of using
E10 in aviation.

Why would anyone in aviation want to put a fuel in an airplane that has
less energy than the fuel they are already using? Ethanol is a lousy fuel.
It has less energy than gasoline. It attracts water from the atmosphere.
If you are lucky enough to avoid phase separation, you are still
accumulating a fuel with even less energy, water just cools the burn.
Ethanol is a solvent and mildly corrosive because it is an oxygenate, that
is what excess oxygen does.

I find it ironic that you would recommend that we should find a work around
the negative effects of E10 when EAA already has a concise paper about the
negative aspects that EAA and Cessna researched about using E10 in
aircraft: http://www.aviationfuel.org/faqs/ethanol_blends.pdf I believe
that Section 11 on page 10 covers the subject well.

But this is the most important reason that finding a work around for E10 is
a solution without a problem. As aviators, we don't have too. Our problem
is that we have never required airports to supply all of the approved
aviation fuels that are available. Unleaded gasoline is an approved
aviation fuel, the STC process gave us recognition of that fact from the
FAA. So why do we need E10? If we had insisted that the 80/87 tanks that
were abandoned 20+ years ago be filled with unleaded mogas, we wouldn't be
discussing this problem today. Unfortunately we took the cheap way out and
self-fueled our aircraft and let the 80/87 tanks disappear. Now there is
no critical mass of mogas service on airports and we have no way of telling
how much mogas we use and the economic impact of its use in aviation.

Besides the spread of E10 everywhere in the US is an unintended consequence
of a very defective federal RFS mandate, EISA 2007, which is actually an
E85 corporate welfare act run amok. Renewable fuel is defined in EISA 2007
as E85. E10 is never mentioned and EISA is NOT a mandatory E10 law, but
because the E85 program is dead now, because ethanol costs more than
gasoline to produce, ethanol is being put into all of the gasoline for non
Flex-Fuel cars because the act has hard coded ethanol quotas that increase
every year.

The biggest problem with your idea Paul is that E10 is only the beginning.
You will never be able to even know what the actual ethanol content of the
fuel you are using, unless there are very accurate labeling laws, and there
is no labeling requirement in EISA 2007 and not all states require a label
on the pump telling you the ethanol content of the fuel being pumped. Just
yesterday the ethanol lobby was granted a hearing on a waiver to raise the
blending limit for non Flex-Fuel cars to E15, and Minnesota has a law on
the books possibly requiring E20 in that state by 2013. So just because
E10 is widespread today and will probably be universal by the end of next
year, it is likely that higher levels of ethanol will be approved by the
end of the year.

The other irony of the federal ethanol mandate is that every state that
passed a mandatory ethanol law exempted aircraft use and most of the states
also protected their marine industry and antique and classic cars and
motorcycles and small engines used in applications like generators, pumps
and portable tools, all used in emergency services. There is a good reason
for that. Ethanol blended gasoline should only be used in fuel injected
engines with fuel computers that can adjust the timing and mixture ratio.
It should not be used in fixed jet, carbureted engines because it changes
the mixture ratio and without retuning and possibly re-jetting the engine
for the ethanol level, engine damage can ensue, and it does considering the
number of articles that are in the media. The actual solution to the
ethanol problem is to prohibit the blending of ethanol in premium unleaded
gasoline so that those people who must use ethanol free gasoline in their
engines have a ready source. This solution is what EAA and the other
aviation alphabet groups should be supporting, rather than trying to figure
out how to live with a bad fuel source.

Regards -- Dean Billing / Sisters, OR / EAA 47719

Nice letter N1593Y! You have a much better understanding of the issues than I do. About all I can add is "What you said!"

I sent Paul my thoughts. They are the same as yours Dean.

Rob

I agree and disagree. The problem being..... we are stuck with Ethanol for any forseeable future and While I do not like it any better than you....I think we should also try and find some way to be able to use it in our planes. I am 30 miles from the nearest Avgas fuel source and predominately burn auto gas. It is getting harder and harder to get premium without ethanol in it. I am in MN and I thought the rules were NO ethanol in Premium fuel. But you still see it in the premium at some places. I think I could accept having to use ethanol and its less BTU output, if I was able to do so without any adverse effects to the fuel system. I would much rather have easy access to fuel than having to go 30 miles to get it.

WWhunter wrote:>... I am in MN and I thought the rules were NO ethanol in Premium fuel. But you still see it in the premium at some places. ...

Like all of the mandatory E10 states, the MN law exempts the use for aircraft, watercraft, antique cars, etc, but it is permissive:

" Subd. 10. Exemption for airport, marina, mooring facility, and resort. A person
responsible for the product may offer for sale, sell, or dispense at an airport, marina, mooring
facility, or resort, for use in airplanes or for purposes listed under subdivision 12, paragraph (a),
gasoline that is not oxygenated in accordance with subdivision 1 if the gasoline is unleaded
premium grade as defined in section 239.751, subdivision 4."

Your law says "may offer for sale". It needs to be mandatory. Montana passed a law that would have made it mandatory, but it had a trigger in it, and the law has never triggered and never will. They are getting E10 in all of their gasoline with no exemptions for aircraft or anybody else.

This is why it is important to write to Paul Poberezny. This is why it is important to try and get mogas on airports. I have been trying for two years to get EAA and the other alphabet groups to editorially support mogas on airports. It is an approved aviation fuel. If we had mogas on a significant number of airports, instead of the insignificant < 4% of the airports as we have now, we wouldn't be talking about this problem. We shot ourselves in the foot by self-fueling from corner service stations because it was "cheap".

The only reason we are "stuck with Ethanol for any forseeable future" is because of the unintended consequences of a federal law that has run amok. The longer you wait the worse it is going to get. The ethanol lobby is already asking for E15 and your state, MN wants gasoline for non flex-fuel cars to be E20 by 2013 unless E85 + E10 equals 20% of all of the auto fuel sold. If you capitulate to E10, as Paul has articulated, you have no guarantee that it will be available. That is the problem, there is no ethanol standard for auto fuel, it can be E15 tomorrow, E20 next year and E30 after that. That is what the ethanol lobby wants because E85 is going nowhere. None of that is going to change the fact that ethanol should only be used in computerized fuel injected engines that can change the mixture, fuel flow and timing to adjust to it, not in our fixed jet, carbureted, fixed timing aircraft engines.

I think the way to fix the ethanol business is to get the news media to expose the whole boondoggle for the farce that it is.If you could get the gas buying public to understand that they are getting screwed you might have a chance.First you need to convince the Save The World folks that it is actually worse for the environment.Then explain how your gas mileage in most cases is worse with ethanol.Then get them to put pressure on Congress to undo the mess.You need lots of people making a stink to move the pols.

Bill

I was trying to get a feel for the local FBO's thoughts on having a mogas pump on the field here in McCall, ID. seeing as the future of 100LL is probably limited. Using the argument that 60 to 70 % of general aviation aircraft can use it with the STC if it's ethonol free. The attitude is that with no perceived need its not time to address the problem. So my thought is to start calling or asking about the availiabilty of mogas at the airports we use and this might get them thinking it's time to look into it. I know here in McCall it would require new tank and pump station as there is no unused setup ready for use. Just trying to think ahead a little.

idahoplanenut wrote:I was trying to get a feel for the local FBO's thoughts on having a mogas pump on the field here in McCall, ID. seeing as the future of 100LL is probably limited. Using the argument that 60 to 70 % of general aviation aircraft can use it with the STC if it's ethonol free. The attitude is that with no perceived need its not time to address the problem.

Too bad, your FBO is a follower. I wonder if he has a clue about the tenuousness of TEL? Not only can 70% of GA TCd aircraft use unleaded gasoline, a large portion of homebuilts can and 100% of LSA can. In fact if a Rotax powered LSA has to use 100 LL it doubles their engine maintenance costs, because it halves their oil change interval and they have to be very careful about plug fouling.

So my thought is to start calling or asking about the availiabilty of mogas at the airports we use and this might get them thinking it's time to look into it. I know here in McCall it would require new tank and pump station as there is no unused setup ready for use. Just trying to think ahead a little.

There is one public use airport in Oregon with mogas, Lebanon State. There is one public use airport in Washington with mogas, Pullman. Both Lewiston and Arco in Idaho thought they would have mogas by this spring, but I haven't called them back to confirm. According to Flight Guide, Buhl, ID has "mogas on request" but it is not listed in Air-Nav anymore.

WWhunter wrote:........... we are stuck with Ethanol for any forseeable future and While I do not like it any better than you....I think we should also try and find some way to be able to use it in our planes.......

We are stuck with it -- for now. If enough people raised hell about the lack of any real benefits of using E10, we might get unstuck. If everyone just sez "well, we're stuck with it-end of story", we will be stuck with it for a long long time. I wouldn't mind E10 too much IF it actually did something to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, reduce pollution, etc. IMHO the only people benefitting are farmers and anyone getting paid or subsidized for it's production, sale, or use.
I send a response to the article, & Joe Norris of EAA got back to me immediately to thank me. So unlike our elected officials, EAA is paying attention.
Seems like our best hope at this point is a compromise-- mandate premium to be sold ethanol free ("E-zero"), and let regular go E10,E15, or whatever.

Eric

We aren't the only ones concerned about ethenol misinformation. It looks like the EPA is looking into the worldwide picture of ethenol production forcing more forest clearing for farming.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20090514 ... nistration